Happy Solstice and resurgence of enlightened consciousness!
With the passing of the end date of the Mayan calender, we arrive at the present moment on the dawn of a new day. Solstice invites us to welcome the warmth of the light of the sun into consciousness to permeate heart, mind and spirit; as without, as within.
Everything we see and feel is a reflection of the state of our own consciousness. To this end, we can explore how the mind participates as a healing or destructive force.
Mind is a 50/50 Operation
You see the flowers, but do you see the roots?
Your view of sun is hot and dry and depends on
Knowing that water is cold and wet.
In day the sky is empty and blue
Yet at night it is full of stars and shining on you
TAO-TE-zen practice is using mind as a washing machine
You throw things dirty in water clean
Soon red is red and green again becomes green.
Practice seeing a flower and feeling the roots
Move as gently as the water that carries away the stone
Practice waiting for the night to see the light
That in day escapes your sight.
Mind is effectively depicted as the tai chi symbol of Yin and Yang. The symbol is perfectly balanced, half Yin, half Yang, but each carries the seed of the other within.
Therefore there is truly no Yin as a pure quality and truly no Yang as a pure quality.
For Yang cannot be known as the male, the hot, the dry, and the expansive without a relative measure of female, the moist, the cool, and contractive energy of Yin.
Just as the Yin cannot be the without Yang, all ideas in mind are divisional and can only be real due to effective opposition.
In mind, for every “is” there is an equal “isn’t.” We only know that a tree is a tree because at one and the same time we know that it isn’t a dog.
When somebody is speaking to us and sharing their thoughts or their feelings with us, there are two of us there – we are each 50% of the relationship.
In order for us to have effective use of mind, we must both be fully present.
Our 100% equates to our 50% in the relationship, and to the degree that we’re fully present with the other, we have a chance of understanding them, of having effective empathy and compassion for them.
Yet to the degree that we’re not present, mind becomes something less than a 50/50 operation.
To gain some insight as to what happens when mind is less than a 50/50 operation, simply imagine the tai chi symbol drawn with the imbalances reflective of somebody who is only 20% present and therefore 30% absent – you’ll see that the symbol takes on a shape and a form that is imbalanced.
If it was a wheel rolling, it would quickly come to a halt with the weight of the imbalance being the anchor.
When our minds are not balanced, they tend to create resistance. They tend to halt the natural flow of information, perception, connection, and creation.
A healthy mind is unstable (flexible and adaptive) in its stability.
It is as though Humpty Dumpty was sitting on a great wall and even the mildest of intention or influence produces a reaction, a response produces a creation.
The healthy mind is open and imbalanced in its balance, at your service, ready to create your loves and your fears with equal zest.
“Mind is a 50/50 Operation,” is a reminder to witness how your mind works and how the universal mind works.
Lay under the stars at night and you will see many magnificent things if you relax your mind. You will see the 50/50 operation clearly displayed between the light and the dark of the night sky.
It is the light that gives dark beauty. It is the dark that gives light beauty. It is the “isn’t” that gives awareness, edge, aspect, body, shape, and form to the “Is.”
Zen is a practice of not overemphasizing the happy nor the sad but being present and in the moment.
In the stillness of the rested mind, the happy is no longer happy as a polarity to the sad. The sad is no longer sad as a polarity to happy.
Wholeness emerges just as we can see the light of the stars at night and we do not see those stars outside of our own sun in the daylight.
We can see the wholeness of the happy and the sad by holding still and relaxing just as we can learn to feel the presence of the roots beneath our feet while we stand facing the tree.
Learning to witness the 50/50 operation of mind and practice sinking into wholeness teaches us how to use our mind and how to be more conscious of when our thoughts may be leading us away from the wholeness by getting caught up in one view, one perspective, only hearing one person’s side of any given story.
Let us work together to balance our minds and create effective opposition out of our 50/50 functional relationship.
Let us learn to find wholeness so we can enjoy the beauty of the roots, the trunk, the branches, the leaves and the flowers as one.
Be that balance.
That is zen.
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
